Google Chrome : กูเกิ้ลโครม minimalist killer web browser

กูเกิ้ลเปิดตัว Web  Browser
So, I’ve finally completed my search for a new browser to fall in love with. I don’t say this as a Google fanboy, nor do I say this as someone who hates FirefoxFirefox 3 .  Firefox has served its purpose, but Google Chrome (now available for download here) seems to beat it out in every way I’ve tested for so far.

I did a quick screencast earlier so as to record my initial findings and give a quick tour around the functions and features I’d discovered.

 

 

In side by side comparisons, I found that Chrome tends to use about 80% less memory than Firefox in loading up the same pages and tabs.  There is also noticeably better long-term memory management as well. Before I recorded the screencast, I left Chrome open for about and hour and a half, and there was only about two extra megabytes of memory usage going on after I came back. After a few minutes of going back to using the the apps I had loaded up, memory usage went back to normal.

 

Chrome is based off Webkit, the same codebase as Safari.  As I discovered in my usage of the program, though, none of the quirks inherent to Safari were present in Chrome. As I stated yesterday:

My problem with Safari, aside from poor memory management and this inexplicable half second delay that occurs between clicking on a link and the browser going to hit the website, is that it mangles text, particularly in WordPress.

This isn’t something isolated to me, either. It’s a common ailment (but apparently not affecting 100% of the Safari using population) that when you type something into a text box, the last character gets truncated. Whenever I use WordPress to edit a blog post, Safari will do all sorts of weird stuff to re-format what I wrote for me, adding and removing random paragraph tags. 

In several tries, I was unable to duplicate this problem in Chrome, to my delight.

Most of the web apps I use are Google based, but even non-Google AJAX applications loaded quickly.  As a demonstration of the quick responsiveness, I page through a number of Google Reader items, and the display delay I experience in both Internet Explorer and Safari was absent and was in fact even more responsive than I’m used to in Firefox.

Overall, the browser offers a lot more usable space not taken up by toolbars and status bars as in other browsers. The navigation is non-standard, but still simple and intuitive.  It comes packed with Google Gears, the only Firefox add-on I still use (again, due to the insane memory hog tendencies of an enhanced Firefox experience).

I give the whole experience both of my thumbs way up. My default browser is now Google Chrome. Given that I spend 80% of my day on the computer and with the browser loaded, that’s about the best endorsement I can give it.